After the Animorphs
by Patrick Blah
Summary: How life is on Earth after the Animorphs are gone. Written before the series ended.
1. Prologue: Last Chapter of the Animorphs

FINAL CHAPTER  
  
Jake  
  
  
I look out today and see the bodies. We had won. Or had we?  
  
When the human race discovered they were being invaded they responded swiftly, but not swift enough. Atomic wars, Quantum Viruses, and everything else that could hurt us were unleashed. We unleashed them back.   
The Andalites said they'd be back. But they had left us for dead, impossible to retrieve our species from the brink of extinction.  
  
Some called it World War 3. Others called it the World Wars 3 thru 300. It was big enough to overpower both those definitions.  
  
The Yeerks had been hit hard off the planet and we were their last hold. We fought.  
  
To the death.  
  
I look at the bodies littering the ground, how many millions had died. How many billions.   
  
We fought valiantly the species of the galaxy would say. We defeated the last of the Yeerks. Or had we?  
  
So many unanswered questions. The blood would have ran and drenched everything, but the bodies were freezing cold from the frigid temperatures of the new ice age. Nuclear winter.  
  
So few survived. No Yeerks. Possibly a hundred humans. So little left. It was too little to rebuild.  
  
Or was it?  
  
Today we have nothing left but us and out own thoughts. Bodies lie in piles. No one goes outside. Most animals are dead. But not all.  
  
The wind blows furiously whipping at the last blades of grass. Grass that has the corpses of children among the blades.   
  
This planet is not owned by the Yeerks. But probably not owned by humans much longer either.  
  
Now our last salvation, that we killed the Yeerks, is destroyed. They have been discovered with 10 other planets. Our sky, now the dimmest gray at noon, darker than space at night, offered little hope.  
  
But as long as we live there is hope. My name is Jake. That can't tell you much, and it probably never will.  
  
But two sentences hold the last and final hope for our galaxy and the human race.  
  
I am an Animorph.  
  
Together we fight.  



	2. Chapter One: Ian

A new series! whee! Make sure to read The Last Chapter of the Animorphs before this..that's what this is based on! Now shoo! Read! ;-)  
  
  
PROLOGUE  
  
My name is Ian. I could probably tell you my last name, but I don't have one. There are so few of us left, that last names aren't used anymore. About 5 years ago there was a catastrophic war, where the existence of aliens was revealed. Not in a pleasant way either.  
  
These aliens, called the Yeerks, were slowly infiltrating the human race. Once they became public knowledge, though, open battle started. In the lead was a group of kids called the Animorphs. They were the first resistance during the low-key invasion.   
  
The war was intense. Nuclear Bombs. Dracon Beams. A Quantum Virus, even. All this combined killed off most of the human race and, we thought, all the Yeerks. We were wrong.  
  
Of the planet, in nearly a dozen niches on mainly unknown worlds, they had maintained themselves. Still they were severely weakened, their number down to around 500. The Yeerk home world had been destroyed.  
  
Humanity was worse hit, the entire population at 139. We thought it was better at first, perhaps even a thousand, but we were proven wrong.  
  
The Animal life of earth was badly hit, but of everything, fared the best. Life is tough, if it can survive, it will. Most of everything killed were severely endangered species and vulnerable ones.  
  
The Andalites left us for dead. A lost cause. After the final battle, the world leaders were gone. Only two of the Animorphs lived. Jake and one they had added later. I forget his name.   
  
Jake was pretty much taken to be the world leader. He didn't live long enough to do much though, the Yeerks new forces came by and, just to smite or reemerging society, dropped some sort of bomb on us. I'm not sure what it was but it left us with too little to ever survive. Estimates of about 20 people in the world we're given to me by my only other acquaintance, Bill, my best friend.   
  
Bill had been a scientist with NASA, amazingly he lived and we got together. Kind of funny, him and I being friends, a kid and an adult. Everyone left wandered from place to place, just trying to survive. We lived in North America, which was probably only containing us. Bill says that his estimates are that there are 3-5 people on our continent. I listen; I mean what else is there to do?   
  
The Animorphs former location was known to humans but because the earth Yeerks had been eradicated, not to anyone else. Bill and I went there to see if anyone was there. If there was help.  
  
I stepped out of Bill's car (which is how the heck we got around, borrowing gas and batteries from the dead). It was a n old barn. Cassie's Barn I believe. I was slightly awed. I stepped inside to look around the historic spot.   
  
The door was locked, but as I pushed at the door, the flimsy lock gave way. I stepped inside and my foot hit something. I fell over, smack on my face.  
  
"Oof!" I sputtered. Bill ran over from the car, "What is..."he started to say, but suddenly trailed off. "What?" I demanded and as I glanced at him I saw what I had tripped on.  
  
  
The Blue Box. The Morphing Cube.  



	3. Chapter Two: Bill

Author's Note:  
  
Well, I certainly didn't expect THIS kind of response to this little ficlet. I actually wrote them as two seperate stories, and merged them together afterwards. Anyway, I hadn't intended to add on to them, but.. when I noticed the most recent review had only been DAYS ago, I decided, what the hell. So.. here you go! :)  
  
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My name is Bill. Well, William Daniel Richardson II. But you can call me Bill. I don't think there's anyone else with that name on the planet at the moment, so I'm sure if you called out "Hey, Bill!", I'd be the only one to answer.  
  
Not that my name's called out very often. Being one of at most six people in the continent puts a slight damper on any sort of social life.  
  
I really wish I had indulged that back when I had the chance. I was thirty-six when the open warfare broke out, and up until that point, I had concentrated on being a nerd. I'd put my all into going into science, and had, for several years, been a senior researcher at NASA. I did a lot of work with the orbital space-plane. Fat load of good that did.  
  
When the war broke out, it was sort of a shock. It primarily occurred in California, but swept around the world. Being in Florida gave me some security, but over time, less and less. And then the bombs started falling.  
  
Miami was vaporized by Dracon Beam. Tampa, Orlando, Jacksonville, all the larger towns were struck by various weapons; in Tampa's case, a mislead nuclear warhead that was actually launched by the US. And then the viruses were released. At first, conventional plagues and highly contagious agents. In the hot, humid land of my home state, there wasn't much to do to keep them at bay. With all the fighting, nearly 70% of the population of the southeast perished.  
  
I was never more grateful for air conditioning and the cleanliness procedures of NASA. Because of the precautions taken, out employees were greatly spared from disease. But as we had been commandeered for military purposes, we had become a prime target. It's funny that of all the people that could have survived, I, at the place and time the quantum virus was released, made it through.  
  
It was horrible. We were immediately sent into a bunker, but someone had been exposed. Soon everyone was in a panic, screaming. I hid like a coward behind some discarded computer consoles. For some reason, some random twist of fate, the virus passed me by. I'd heard an estimate that it was 99.998% effective. They had underestimated it quite a bit, but still, I had managed to slip into the very small group of survivors.  
  
I managed to find a wind-up radio, and a portable TV set. I assumed their former users wouldn't be needing them. I managed to pick up some weak broadcasts from some other survivors. I slowly made my way north, and then west, to where people had begun to gather.  
  
Ten people. Ten. Only ten people had managed to find their way to each other. We guessed maybe a few others hadn't been able to catch our broadcasts. We split up to search probably places, mostly where people had thought they had heard someone on the radio, but hadn't been able to confirm it.  
  
Sadly, just as we were separating, the Yeerks were back. Two small fighters were all they had, but it was enough to track down our radio transmissions and drop some conventional bombs on out last known locations, and the last knock locations of other groups over the world.   
  
The largest group, a group of five people, was all killed. Two others just vanished. Similar things happened to other groups around the world. With more than a hundred around the world, we could manage to regain the population to a point where humanity could survive. But we were ruined afterwards. We couldn't have more than twenty people left in the world. We were all doomed.  
  
After the final attack, I tried contacting anyone, but I had no luck. I'd wandered for several months through the middle of the US, ending up near St. Louis. And there, against all odds, I'd managed to find one of the people who hadn't been able to meet up with us. A young boy named Ian. He couldn't have been more than seven before the war had begun, although he claimed to have been eight. I took him with me, protecting him. We aimlessly made our way around for several years.  
  
Now I'm 42. Ian, the boy I rescued outside of St. Louis, is 15. He never even knew his last name. We had made a decision to go to where the Animorphs had lived, figuring anyone out of any contact might try to head there.  
  
And now we're to the present. Ian's rushing over towards Cassie's barn, of all places. It's amazing to be in places where such dramatic history happened, and within my own memory. Ian's pushed down the door, and tripped. I ran over to see if he was hurt.  
  
"Ian?" I asked, jogging over, "What is..."  
  
I was cut short by the sign in front of me. It couldn't be. They couldn't have actually left it here the whole time, could they?  
  
Ian looked up at me sharply, "What?" And as he did that, he got a view of exactly what I had just seen.  
  
"This changes things quite a bit," I murmured. 


End file.
